​In many forms of coaching and therapy, the practitioner has a plan. The course of the conversation depends relatively little on what the client wants. That makes it predictable and thus easy for the coach. But is the comfort of the coach or the therapist (rather than the client) the goal of the session?

​In taking a solutions-focused approach, you do have to listen to the client, and the questions you ask depend a great deal on what the client has to say.We have a favourite SF training exercise, in which you practice with a partner and your next question must include a significant word or phrase from the previous answer. So the pattern shifts from ‘Question, answer, question’ to ‘Answer, question, answer’.

In SF coaching sessions, we start by asking what the client wants. That’s the plan, and that’s as far as the plan goes. The rest depends upon the answer you get and whatever is needed to get a more detailed description of what’s wanted, descriptions of resources and descriptions of progress.

And the value of that? These questions will produce change. And they will keep you as the coach in the moment and on your toes.

​Sometimes a client in a coaching session is not ready to talk about what they want, their goals or even to have a sense of what a better future might be like for them. That may appear to scupper the conversation if you are intent on goal-finding as your first coaching step. But there are other ways to proceed.

One option is to ask your client, ‘What are you already doing that's useful?’ to gain pointers towards from their current activities that might plausibly form part of a more fruitful future.

Another is to start with highlights from the past - proud achievements, better periods in their life or their work - to get a sense of what’s important to them, their talents and their experiences.

Then, when the time is right, you can have a more informed conversation about what’s wanted in the future.

​​How do you know what to say when a client answers your question? Most of the time you did not know what your client was going to say. That was why you asked the question.Knowing what to do next at that precise moment has a great deal to do with paying attention to language. And what we say will depend on our assumptions.

​A participant on a recent webinar cited a study he’d heard about, saying that visualising a goal can be counter-productive to one’s motivation. Apparently, there’s a danger of feeling that you’ve already accomplished your objective, so you put less effort into doing it ‘again’ for real.

For a solutions-focused practitioner, this seems more about the danger of extrapolating too much from a single research project than about the value of visualisation. There’s obvious value for an individual or a team in the clarity gained by visualising the goal. The depiction of the Future Perfect in detail also provides useful signs by which to measure progress. And it encourages reflecting on the benefits of the various aspects of the goal – which again will provoke and boost motivation. I’m not sure how you would gain those benefits without somehow visualising what’s wanted in glorious detail.

Nor is the Future Perfect visualisation the end of the typical coaching process. First, in a detailed articulation of a vision, we not only see it, we speak it, unearthing more and more detail. And then we also explore resources and consider the next small steps. Those additional elements should be more than enough to avoid any loss of motivation.

​Many clients have difficulty in letting go of their problem. It’s not surprising. They have lived with the problem for a while; the problem is giving them trouble and it’s worthy of respect. Yet the solution-focused practitioner pops up to say the problem may have nothing to do with the solution – and remind them that it’s the solution that the client wants. That may make sense logically, but from the client’s perspective that can be tough to accept emotionally.

It’s tempting to think that resilience is a fixed personality trait, maybe even something that we are born with. But be reassured, the ability to bounce back from failure and to cope with everyday difficulties is something that can be learned and developed by anyone.

People sometimes suspect that Solutions Focus practitioners underestimate the seriousness of their clients’ issues. People have problems, dammit, lots of problems. And these problems profoundly affect them. They are troublesome, nasty, frightening. So don’t ignore our complaints or our pain, as you start questing for solutions, they say.

One of the most important ideas in Solutions Focus is that the problem is not necessarily related to the solution. And this notion seems odd to many people. They wonder how can you get to a solution if you don't start with a problem. A first step may be to imagine various issues where there is no problem.

​Wouldn’t it be nice to know what is going to happen? You could make plans with so much more confidence and feeling of certainty. You’d feel like you were facing the known rather than the unknown. You could move along the scale, away from fear and trepidation, towards excitement and curiosity, perhaps even arriving at comfort and security.But the future, it is said, is difficult to predict. Notoriously so, in fact, and getting more and more difficult with each shocking change in economics, politics and climate.